Good ideas are inanimate objects, not gimmicks
Don't fall in love with credentials. Check under the hood whenever a celebrity athlete endorses a product.
This may sound like a paradox. But I find that people in business and tech tend to get too hung-up on efficiency and process, to the point that it sometimes gets in the way of clear thinking.
This Harvard Business Review interview with Jerry Seinfeld from a few years ago is going viral again, and I think it’s a good reminder that even our most esteemed institutions can have an off day.
It starts with a great observation from Jerry — a lot of our best ideas come from a problem you’re fed up with. But then it gets weird.
HBR: How did Comedians in Cars originate?
Seinfeld: It’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?” For me, that was talk shows where music plays, somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands with the host, and sits down. “How are you?” “You look great.” I’m also sick of people who are really there to sell their show or product. “What am I really sick of?” is where innovation begins.
You and Larry David wrote Seinfeld together, without a traditional writers’ room, and burnout was one reason you stopped. Was there a more sustainable way to do it? Could McKinsey or someone have helped you find a better model?
Who’s McKinsey?
It’s a consulting firm.
Are they funny?
No.
Then I don’t need them. If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.
We don’t know the context of this question, if he was being light-hearted or tongue-in-cheek or whatnot. Whoever led this interview is obviously a smart guy, or at least smart enough to have a byline with one of the world’s most respected business schools. But does he really think a management consulting firm could fix whatever problems Jerry had towards the end of Seinfeld’s run?
There are so many intangibles that go into a good writer’s room that have nothing to do with efficiency.
Take this week’s explosive Better Call Saul mid-season finale plot twist. Apparently it wasn’t on the table when the writers initially gathered to create this epic final season.
I’m guessing some of you reading this have an approval process at your day job that borders on labyrinth. Can you imagine how much gumption it must take to trust those creators to weave together the most compelling story when they don’t even know where it’s going? We’re talking about millions of dollars, and dozens of careers, at the mercy of a few. Do you really think simply finding a way to spend less time writing would fix that conundrum?
Obviously, you need a good foundational process to whatever you do. But the right answer to your problem isn’t always the most convenient one. Nor is it based on the credentials of whoever came up with it.
I’m bringing this up because the market’s cooling, the house lights are coming up on Wall Street, and there’s some shoddy ideas in free-fall getting figured out for what they really are. Ideas that are going to end badly for a lot of people who bought in. Ideas that not too long ago were propped up as “the next big thing” by celebrity athletes and sports business reporters looking to get out ahead on trends.
For example, the idea of cryptocurrency has been around for a while. I’m friends with people who invested in Bitcoin when it was only worth $80. And I’ve still yet to hear a good explanation as to what its utility actually is.
Warren Buffett doesn’t invest in it. Jamie Dimon hates it. You can’t pay taxes with it. But Tom Brady — greatest football player of all time, and loyal business partner of a guy twice sued by the Federal Trade Commission for fraud — says you should get in on it. And Joe Pompliano — a guy who, for all his inane takes and general Ralph Wiggum-ness, still has 58,000 subscribers to his newsletter — thinks it’s some Great Leap Forward for society every time another athlete takes the plunge.
Why? None of these tulip-maniacs can actually tell you, which is why all those crypto commercials you saw ad nauseum during the last Super Bowl were so gassed up on FOMO rhetoric. When in doubt, sell clout.
This column isn’t meant to be a requiem on bad ideas. Just a referendum on how we define good ones.
It’s not an accident that the most revered minds in any of our major sports are often the ones most willing to eschew credentials and source ideas from outside of their comfort zone.
Bill Belichick keeps in close contact with Kevin Kelley, the legendary high school coach who never punts and always onside kicks. Chip Kelly once spent three days with a high school coach in Idaho when he needed new ideas for RPOs. John Calipari, former marketing major at Clarion State College, reads business books and once, in seeking a way to unleash his prized recruit Derrick Rose, borrowed an offense drawn up on a cocktail napkin from a junior college coach in Fresno.
That’s the difference between the best in the game and guys like Matt Patricia, who last year with the walls circling in on him in Detroit boasted about a famous play from years earlier that he may not have even called when asked about his coaching decisions.
Early on in the pandemic, I got a chance to chat with a creative director at the Tennessee Titans. It remains one of the most important conversations of my carer. Several times over the course of our two-plus hours we talked, he made the point to say “ideas are inanimate objects” and “the best idea is the boss of the room.”
What he meant by that is, if you’re going to make any ground in finding the next great idea, you have to disassociate ideas from people when brainstorming. My idea isn’t better than your idea. Your idea isn’t better than Fred from IT’s idea. And so forth.
Every idea is its own organism. It doesn’t belong to anyone. And whatever that best idea is, that’s what controls the room. When you have this mindset, you’re quick to kill an idea if it’s a dud1, and eager to work with the rest of the room to refine something good into something great.
Here’s another example.
UCF is regarded as one of the most dynamic and creative branders in all of college athletics, especially when it comes to its nationally-ranked football program. Being different and taking big swings at true zero-to-one ideas is in its DNA out of necessity, because they’re fighting for brand identity in a football-mad state dominated by three of the most iconic programs ever (Florida, Florida State and Miami).
Not sure how much of this is public knowledge, but I learned this week on a webinar with their Associate AD of Content that three of their boldest ideas came from the following:
Twitter handles on player jerseys’ back nameplates for the 2021 spring game — This came from their offensive line coach
QR codes in place of numbers on the backs of jerseys for 2022 spring game — This came from their director of football operations SJ Tuohy, who you may remember from “The Blind Side.” The initial idea was to put them on helmets in place of the logo.
“XXX Miles to the Future of Football” billboards all over Florida — Gus Malzahn declared at his opening presser that “This place is the future of football”, and they ran with it. Gus definitely wanted billboards, though.
These ideas didn’t belong to some focus group, marketing seminar, or goddamn McKinsey.
They came from guys with boots on the ground, who didn’t go to Harvard, didn’t win seven Super Bowls, but interacted with dialed-in UCF fans every day and trusted their own instincts about what they thought they’d like. And the moment the idea was set in motion, it ceased to belong to any of them.
When you come across a great idea, do you honestly care where it came from?
So why, then, would you invest in something you don’t understand just because of the names pumping it?
The next truly great idea — in sports, in life — could come from anywhere. So don’t fall for the credential trap.
As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said: “Expect the unexpected or you’ll never find it.”
Some of your best ideas can come from working backwards from a deliberately bad idea to a place that makes sense. It’s called the “bad idea brainstorm”, another technique he taught me, which I’ll get into another time.